Two Forward, One Back
To my great surprise and astonishment, shortly after recording Episode 43 in Dad’s office, I was greeted with an email from the Colombian Consulate in San Francisco:
“Good morning, Yes, you can process the visa with us. Please send me your phone number.”
Finally! After five weeks of daily frustrations, all of my questions were answered in five minutes. By dinnertime, I had our applications finished online with a package overnighted to San Fran.
Considering that we could be out of the country in two weeks, Lucy from school and Carrie-Bri had both recommended a hair color change. I agreed. Blonde Americans don’t exactly blend in with the crowd. So Carrie dyed me a medium brown on Sunday.
“Okay, you look European now.”
Safe. I also reluctantly resolved to leave behind my Cardinals t-shirt collection for the summer.
So while I edited our podcast, Carrie-Bri and Puck made orange play-dough, the consistency and color of Circus Peanuts. Mom was road-tripping to Columbia and “Artichoke Annie’s” for the day with Grandma. And Linnea-Irish was volunteering at VBS.
Things were starting to look up. As I switched on the game and tucked Puck in for the night, I wrapped up a few things at the old laptop from the kitchen table before re-joining the team from Denver in the basement. Then I heard it float upstairs, the concerned voice of Dan McLaughlin from the sound booth.
“Oh. No.”
Matt Holliday. Down hard in left field, twisting around in pain. For the Cardinals’ personal practically invincible Great Hulk to react to an injury like that, it couldn’t be great.
So I was feeling sort of low when Oxbear returned way late from work. I made him breakfast for dinner – sausage, scrambled eggs, English muffins – and instead we watched a depressing turn of the century movie taking place in Ireland over a bag of Hershey’s chocolate treasures. Hadn’t watched a film in two months: baseball season.
Oxbear did later offer me a recommendation regarding the bag of chocolate I almost unconsciously dove into that evening.
“Collette, make sure you don’t eat all this chocolate in one place. Walk around the house while you do it.”